Braeside Park - January 2016

This was my first walk since getting over a world class case of Gastro, with me still being a bit green around the gills we decided to do a walk close to home. Braeside Park is ten minutes from home which is about as close as you can get I suppose, well without writing up a stroll around my back yard. The other reason we decided on Braeside Park is that the walking is fairly undemanding, mostly being on wide shared paths so it shouldn't tax my broken body too much. Pulling into the 24 hour section of the car park and setting off on the walk at around 7pm was a little late but at least I'd have a chance to get some good light for some of my photos, I need all the help I can get to make some of these suburban parkland strolls interesting.

Braeside Park.

First up we strolled across the lawns towards a wetland nature trail, Braeside Park is on an old farm that was itself reclaimed from a swamp, Parks are revegetating the old farm and they have also created a series of wetlands in the park. We were reward with with a sighting of Water Hens and ducks, as well as some cockatiels and lorikeets, while Sam and I debated the likelihood of the lorikeets hanging around while I change lenses I spied a Red Belly Black Snake slithering across our path a few metres away, yeah it was all happening. Not managing to actually get a photo of anything bar the Wood Hens was slightly disappointing, oh well.

The Braeside Park humpy.

I missed getting a photo of the more exotic fauna, but I did get the Water Hens.

Leaving the inky black water in the wetlands behind we wandered down the wide gravel path to the southern end of the park. The park passes by a lot of magnificent old Red Gums and it was nice strolling along the flat path in the golden afternoon light, the dry grass and golden light giving the scene a quintessential Australian feel. The southern end of the park is home to some more wetlands, the park suffers a bit from a salinity problem and we passed a bore that the land managers use to try and control the water table, they have also planted a lot of trees to help drag the water table lower, even so there are a lot of dead trees down this end of the park.

We followed the wide gravel Red Gum Path to the southern end of the park.

The wetlands down the southern end of the park were pretty dry on this visit.

The stark white skeleton like dead trees did make for some good photos, which was just as well as the wetlands were fairly dusty on our visit. There was a little water in a couple of wetlands but most were dry, checking out the bird hide I was a little disappointed that parks had put perspex across the viewing slot, scratched perspex not being the best thing to take photos through.

Braeside Park struggles with a bit of a salinity problem.

Heading back up to the top of the park we passed by some old farm machinery on display beside the track, some cattle grazing in the middle of the park added to the rural feel of what is actually parkland surrounded by suburbia. After turning off the Howard Road Trail we cut across the top of the park to meet our out bound route, on the way passing a mosaic celebrating the local Bunurong people as well as a few more reminders of the more recent farming history of the park.

A bit hard to believe that we were surrounded by the sprawling suburbs of Melbourne.

Sam heading up the Howard Road Trail.

Parks are slowly removing the Radiate Pine trees from the area as they revegetate, and someone with a good imagination and some talent with a chainsaw has utilised some  of the leftover stumps to make them into some nice sculptures, the pine glowing red in the setting sun. With the sun about to drop down below the horizon we arrived back at the car in time to get one last photo of the sunset, happy to have got out of the house and stretched my legs and even happier to have completed my little excursion without feeling crook.

A mosaic celebrating the local Bunurong people.

And a bit of recent European History.

The Dirt.

This is walk # 20 out of Chapman's Day Walks Melbourne book. We walked 7.1 kilometres on this stroll and climbed....wait for it....19 metres, yeah its a pretty flat walk! This is another of those strolls that would be suitable for wheelchairs, prams or younger children, the northern part of the park is home to lots of picnic areas and an adventure playground for the little ones. Parks Victoria have got a fair bit of info online about Braeside Park, all you really need to complete this easy walk really. 

The sun was just about to dip below the horizon.

This is probably a true reflection of the light when we finished the walk.